The Human Zero. The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner

Chapter 1 The Mysterious Inclosure

Click Kendall realized that there was something almost impersonal in the antagonism of the man before him.

“Do I understand you refuse to make any statement?”

That question had been effective with many another tough customer. But this man answered it with a single explosive word.

“Yes.”

Click Kendall played his trump card. With a happy smile suffusing his features he whipped a notebook from his pocket.

“Then I shall quote you as saying that!” he exclaimed, and wrote meaningless words rapidly. “I have your permission to quote you as having used those words! Now your further plans are to—”

But the man at the gate did not weaken. His black, glittering eyes looked directly at Click Kendall, yet seemed focused upon some distant point.

“You may quote me as having said that you had better withdraw your foot from that gate!”

The words were a monotone of calm irritation.

Click Kendall hastily jerked back his foot. The gate slammed shut. The sound of a lock clicking into place terminated the interview with conclusive finality.

Kendall sighed, turned, walked a few steps, then looked back.

The sun illuminated an unpainted board fence, ten feet high, surmounted by a triple barrier of barbed wire. What lay behind that fence could only be surmised. It stretched for a hundred yards without so much as a knothole, and the cracks had been covered with strips of batten.

Climbing into his battered flivver, Kendall gave one last, longing look at the fence, yellow in its unpainted newness, then wrestled with the steering wheel as the car jolted over the dusty highway.

He had failed, and the editor of the Bugle wouldn’t take kindly to that failure. He had been ordered to find out, and he was returning as ignorant as when he started.

Professor Wagner was a nut, to be sure, but there was a good story in him and—

Click snapped to abrupt attention.

His car, jouncing around a curve in the road, rattled full upon a scene of conflict.

A low-hung touring car was crowding a roadster to one side of the road. Three pairs of hands, stretched out from the touring car, were literally lifting a struggling figure from behind the steering wheel of the roadster.

Even as Click gasped his incredulous astonishment, the figure was jerked clear. The roadster careened, skidded, and headed directly toward him. The touring car ripped into a tearing charge that billowed a vortex of swirling dust behind.

Click dodged the roadster, tried to jerk the wheel in time to avoid a collision with the touring car. Failed. A jar tingled his shoulders. Metal ripped. He was rattled around the inside of his flivver like a bit of popping corn in a popper.

His swimming eyes saw a kaleidoscope of scenery circulating about him, then steadied as the cars came to a stop. The flivver had locked front fenders and hubcaps with the touring car, bringing it to a stop, half twisted about on the road.

The driver of that car was standing up. The two figures in the back seat were struggling with their captive, and Click saw that that captive was a woman.

For a swift fraction of a second he watched her kicking legs, fluttering skirts, heard her screams. Then he realized that the arm of the driver was extended, pointing something directly at his body.

He flung himself down, over the door. There was a flash of fire. The spitting explosion sounded surprisingly inadequate in the unechoing atmosphere of the hot afternoon.

Click’s surprise gave way to an unreasoning red rage. Kidnap a woman and smash his car, would they? Shoot at him as though he’d been a mad dog, eh? He’d show ’em!

It never occurred to him that he was tackling three armed men, that they were desperate, that he was unarmed. He only knew that he wasn’t going to stand for such tactics.

Click swarmed over the door of the touring car.

Some one cracked him over the head. The heel of the girl’s shoe kicked him in the face. The driver fired again, and a searing pain stung its way the length of Click’s left arm.

His right fist crashed upward.

The driver toppled backward under the force of that blow. The edge of the car caught him back of the knees. He flung up his hands in a wild, instinctive effort to regain his balance. The weapon flashed from his hand, whirled in a glittering arc, and landed in the brush. The man tottered for a moment, then plopped into the dust.

Click jumped in the back of the car.

One of the men raised an automatic. The girl was frantically beating the other man with a barrage of puny-fisted blows that served only to tire her.

Click lunged for the automatic, missed, heard the spat of powder, swung, missed, stopped a blow on the jaw, swung again. This time his fist thudded home. The man staggered back. The girl wrenched herself free, vaulted the car, and sprinted.

Click heard a curse from the driver’s seat.

Instinctively he ducked, twisting his head as he did so. The dust-covered figure of the driver, one leg crooked over the back of the seat, held a wrench aloft. The wrench descended, and then nauseating darkness engulfed Click.

There was the sensation of falling endless miles. Hot dust stung his nostrils. He could hear the sound of profanity, repeated with mechanical regularity, an utter lack of tone expression.

The roar of a speeding motor, a sickening smell of gasoline, and the car was gone, leaving behind it a swirling cloud of dust. Click realized some one was bending over him.

He struggled, sat up, spat, and tried to speak. The dust gritted in his teeth, clogged his nose.

“Thanks,” said a feminine voice.

“Don’t mention it,” muttered Click with an attempt at humor.

The girl muttered a single explosive word. It sounded remarkably like “damn.”

“Yea?” prompted Click.

“We’ve got to get in the brush. They thought I’d kept on running. They’ll be back as soon as they can turn the car. Can you walk?”

Click rolled to hands and knees, straightened, and gave a wobbly grin.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Down the road came the roar of a motor, the clash of shifting gears.

“They’re coming!”

She half dragged him into the brush.

From the other direction could be heard the sound of an approaching motor. Then the touring car ripped into motion.

“Another car scared ’em off. Sit still.”

The girl’s voice was calm, confident, given in the manner of one who is accustomed to command. Abruptly Click became conscious that she was beautiful.

“Don’t say a word. They’re slowing to look at the wrecks. Keep quiet!”

Brakes squeaked upon dry drums. The sound of excited voices came to his ears. “How could it have happened? — nobody hurt — roadster must have gone out of control — better take the numbers — couldn’t have been long ago—”

Click watched the girl’s face.

She was sitting, as alert as a crouching lion, peering through the screen of the brush. Her lips, slightly parted, were full but nicely shaped. Her eyes a deep violet, nose small, slightly upturned. There was about her something indefinable, the aura of one who is accustomed to take care of herself, who is playing with big events.

“Can I look?” asked Click.

She shook her head without even lowering her eyes to his face.

“Lie still. They’re going. Now, quick. They’ve gone!”

Click rolled over, found that his strength was returning rapidly, got to his feet.

The violet eyes regarded his sleeve.

“You’re hit?”

He looked at the red-stained cloth.

“Guess so.”

She pulled up his coat sleeve.

“Humph, just a flesh wound, but it’s got to be bound.”

Click said nothing. Somehow he resented that tone of minimizing disinterest.

“Think you can walk to the house? It’s not a quarter of a mile.”

“The Wagner place?”

“Yes. I’m Professor Wagner’s daughter. You know him?”

“Just met him. I was sent out from Centerberry to interview him for the Bugle.”

She paused, regarded him with appraising eyes.

“Do you know, I think I could hate you most cordially. Reporters are snoopers who pry into other people’s business. But I can’t let you bleed to death. I’ve got to take you inside, so come on.”

“And in reply to your cordial hospitality,” snapped Kendall, “permit me to remind you that I’m a reporter, on official business, and that I’m going to publish any information I can get.”

“That’s to be expected — of a reporter!” And then she laughed. “Do you know, we’re not behaving in the conventional manner? I should be thanking you for having saved my life; and I really should have developed a sprained ankle or something so you could have carried me to the house. Come on, let’s forget that you’re a reporter and act human. After all, it’s not your fault.”

As a reply trembled on his lips, Click stopped dead in his tracks, his unbelieving eyes staring at the upper portion of a shed which showed over the top of the board fence.

That shed disintegrated into scattering lumber. A pointed dome of glittering metal thrust itself above the ripping roof, hesitated for a moment, then shot into the air.

The glittering dome became the tip of a huge beehive affair, made of some highly polished metal. And that great beehive drifted placidly through the tumbling ruins of the wrecked shed, ascended some forty feet in the air, and hung there, poised, shimmering like some gigantic soap bubble.

For a space of swift seconds it remained suspended, then dropped swiftly, paused, drifted, and jolted to earth. Only the upper portion remained showing.

The girl made a few swift, running steps, then paused, turned.

“Oh, I hate you!” she flared.

“Hate me?” asked Click, dazed.

“Yes, hate you! You did have to come right at this time! He’s solved it. I tell you he’s got the thing he’s been working for; and I’ve got to take you in there! That’s what I get for being a woman. If I’d been a man I’d have been better prepared for those thugs. But no, I had to play the part of the poor, helpless damsel in distress; and you had to come along as the rescuing hero, and had to get shot so you require attention; and I’ve got to take you inside.”

Click Kendall drew himself up. A sudden ringing was in his ears. She seemed rather far away, surrounded by a dark border of flickering darkness.

“I assure you you won’t need to... to... I can... look out—”

He noticed that the violet eyes widened in alarm.

“Don’t faint, don’t faint!”

And then her arms were around his neck.

“Please, Mister Man, don’t faint. Oh, I’m sorry! I was rotten selfish. But you can’t understand. Please hold up until we get to the gate. Try. Fight. It’s life and death, more than life and death.”

And Click, hating himself for the momentary weakness, wishing that he hadn’t been hurt so he could have raised his hat in a very dignified gesture and walked wordlessly away, was forced to lean upon her and fight to keep his consciousness.

The entire world seemed suddenly a sort of Alice in Wonderland place, where strange beehives floated around in the afternoon skies; where beautiful girls supported him with firm, muscular arms, begged him not to faint, laughed, sobbed, praised his spirit, and then grunted maledictions at an unkind fate that had thrown a helpless man on their hands.

His feet worked mechanically up and down. But they seemed to cling to the earth with each step. And there was no feeling of contact. It was as though he floated, yet was bogged down in a sticky marsh.

He saw the outlines of the board fence before him, heard the roar of a motor car behind him. Fancied there was the rattle of shots, and fainted.

Chapter 2 Attacked

A thin, reedy voice was piping meaningless figures and formulae. At first the sounds meant nothing to Click Kendall except a source of irritation. Then he gathered that these sounds had meaning, that they were words. The words seemed to formulate in his brain, independent of the sound, yet connected in some way with the reedy voice. He tried to open his eyes, but was too weary.

“Light varies inversely as the square of the distance,” rasped the reedy voice. “Magnetism varies inversely as the square of the distance. Gravitation varies inversely—”

Click Kendall opened his eyes. The reedy voice snapped to an abrupt termination. A pair of wide, violet eyes were gazing into his. Over the girl’s shoulder was the face of the man who had slammed the gate in his face earlier in the day.

Click tried a smile.

“Professor, I was sent out to get an interview. There’s been a rumor floating around Centerberry that you were experimenting with an anti-gravitational contrivance, and were planning an exploration of the moon.”

The girl’s hand clapped to his mouth.

“Dad! Mr. Kendall’s a reporter. And he refused to come to a truce. He’s going to publish what he learns.”

And then she leaned over him, placed a small glass of excellent brandy to his lips.

“Drink this,” she said kindly, and then added with swift rancor, “and shut up!”

Click gulped the stinging liquid, felt it coursing down his gullet, leaving a welcome trail of warmth, bringing new strength.

“When are you leaving?” he asked.

The professor’s black eyes snapped.

“Here, drink this,” crooned the girl.

Mechanically Click opened his lips. Another jolt of fiery liquid shot down his throat. He realized that the girl was deliberately attempting to get him drunk so that he could not utilize the advantage his injury had given him.

He scowled at that, then smiled. After all it was a pretty good world. A rosy hue permeated his thoughts. Beautiful, violet-eyed young girls, beehives that floated, black eyes, prewar brandy. Oh, it wasn’t so bad! And he had the nucleus of a nice story! He felt better now.

Click smiled.

“Do I get another drink, Miss Wagner?”

“You do not!” she snapped.

“Thanks. No harm in asking. But, Professor, if I may ask you a question—”

The question was never asked.

There was the sound of crashing lumber, the splintering of boards, a tearing of metal. Hurried footsteps sounded without the door. A frantic banging of fists caused Professor Wagner to fling it open.

A man, armed with rifle and revolver, gestured toward the fence.

“They’ve driven their machine right through the fence, sir, and are trying to get to the bell!”

Wagner’s dark eyes glittered with cold fury. He snatched a rifle from over the desk, made the door in two great strides. Nor was his daughter far behind.

Click Kendall jumped to his feet, felt a great wave of dizziness, groped for a chair, and stood, swaying. His eyes could see the running figures through the open door. There was a length of smashed fence, a wrecked automobile, running men as they deployed toward the metal shell.

One of them raised his arm. A revolver spat viciously. The professor flung up his rifle. It cracked forth a high velocity bullet that sent the rushing man tumbling to the ground in a search for cover. Another figure on the left ducked behind a pile of lumber, opened fire.

Click saw the bullets kicking up dust near Professor Wagner’s feet. He saw the girl pleading with her father, leading him toward the great metal beehive. Out in the road a passing motorist had stopped. The passengers gawked in open-mouthed wonder.

Click tried a feeble, wobbling run.

The professor gained the metal bell. The girl was behind him. Then the enemy rushed.

Professor Wagner threw his rifle to his shoulder, then suddenly spun half around, and lurched against the girl.

The running figures held their fire, pressed grimly forward. The man who had given the warning, apparently a watchman not overburdened with intelligence, fired an indecisive shot or two, then lowered his rifle, standing uncertainly.

Click passed him, snatched the revolver from its holster.

“Hands up!” he yelled at the foremost figure.

His answer was a singing bullet that wasped its way past his ear. Click fired once, then held his fire, fearing to hit the girl. He reached her side almost at the same time as did the running enemy.

A single lucky swing of the revolver, and he felt the impact of the barrel on the man’s skull. Then he realized that there were struggling figures about him, that the girl had clubbed the rifle taken from her father and was swinging it. There was a spatter of shots. The enemy withdrew, apparently non-plused by the unexpected strength of the defense.

The entrance of the polished metal beehive was before them.

“Inside,” piped the professor in a weak voice. “It’s bulletproof.”

Click helped the girl get the professor in the open door. She slammed it shut.

“Dad, are you badly hurt?”

“Nothing much; caught my shoulder an awful wallop. The shock was the worst. Guess we can bandage it up. We’re safe from bullets here.”

He got to his feet, explored his right shoulder with the tips of his left fingers.

“It’ll be all right,” he said.

Click Kendall looked about him eagerly.

The bell was not over twenty-five feet high, but was more than thirty-five feet in diameter. Within the shell was a cone of what appeared to be silver. It furnished a rounded mirror in which the reflections of the little group flickered in weird distortions. There was a metal table, a glass case containing various instruments, a clutter of boxes and barrels. And there were windows in the metal sides of the shell, little round windows in which three-inch plate glass was set in what appeared to be live rubber.

Breathing heavily, still weak from his loss of blood and exertion, Click pressed his face against one of the windows, wondering what had become of their attackers.

He saw two men grouped in ominous conference, saw a third bringing up an oblong box. Click recognized the label. It was dynamite.

“Quick!” he called. “They’re going to blow off a side of the metal. Is there a loophole through which we can fire?”

And his words brought Professor Wagner to his side.

“Yes, we can and will. Those men deserve to be killed.”

“No, no, Father. There must be some other way!”

Click noticed the men dart their alarmed glances to the left, noticed also a sudden ripple of panic in their attitude, and turned his own eyes.

He saw a red machine, filled with grim men, swinging in from the road. A siren was fastened to the front of the car, just below the radiator.

“Here comes the sheriff. It’s all right!” Click exclaimed.

And the three, setting down the case of dynamite, sprinted for the gap in the fence.

“All right nothing!” moaned the professor. “We’ll have to testify, go through all sorts of red tape, be photographed, held for a trial—”

He staggered to the metal table, lurched into the chair.

“You put in the provisions, Dot?”

“Yes, Father.”

Professor Wagner pulled a lever. Then Click Kendall gasped his utter incredulity.

For the sheriff and his companion drifted down and away. There was no sensation of motion. It was merely that in place of watching the striding figure of the sheriff he suddenly saw the top of the broad-brimmed hat, then caught the oval of an upturned, open-mouthed face.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Click. “What’s happened?”

He saw Professor Wagner at the table, crouched over, studying the instruments. He wanted to see what was going on, ask him what was happening.

He took a swift stride, and then found himself shooting up toward the pointed dome of the shell. Frantically he waved his arms, kicked his feet. All to no avail. He drifted up until he touched the roof.

He pushed his hands against the metal to ward off the impact, and found himself descending, squarely for the professor’s head.

Click tried to avert that collision. His efforts availed nothing. He saw that he would fall squarely on the man’s head.

“Look out!” he yelled.

Professor Wagner looked up. As he did so, Click fell directly into the upturned features.

To his surprise there was no shock of collision. The professor did not crumple to the floor, crushed beneath the weight of the falling body. Instead Professor Wagner brushed Kendall away with his uninjured hand as one might brush off a fly.

And Click Kendall found himself floating through space until he fetched up against the far side of the shell.

“Watch out where you’re going!” snapped Professor Wagner. “You might interfere with my instruments!”

Click Kendall was too astounded to even attempt an answer.

It was the girl’s voice that gave him the explanation.

“You see there isn’t any gravitation up here,” she said. “There’s a window in the floor. Take a look through it. Dad, do let me take a look at that shoulder. You’re losing blood.”

The man gave the instruments a final adjustment.

“All right. We’re safe here. I just got the missing factor in my calculations this morning, and I’m not exactly certain of the coefficient of balance and repulsion. But we can keep an eye out. Kendall, keep your eye to the window in the floor. If we start drifting down warn me at once. All right, Dot. I don’t think it’s serious, but I can’t afford to lose any blood. I think the collar bone’s fractured. You’ll find the medicine chest under the table; but no opiates. Must have my senses clear.”

Click dropped to the floor.

“Call me if I can help,” he said, then looked through the glass window.

What he saw made him believe he was dreaming.

The shell hung suspended at about a thousand feet. Below him, the fenced portion of the ranch stretched in a square, a square that was rapidly filling with moving figures.

He could see the winding glitter of dusty road, the thicket of brush, could see the hills beyond, then the shimmering ribbon of placid river. Far over to the right was Centerberry with its smokestacks, its clusters of trees, white houses. But the elevation of the shell was hardly high enough to give him other than a hazy view of the place.

Click glanced again at the grounds below.

To his surprise they seemed to have moved to the right.

But he could see the road, see, also, the sudden increase in traffic as automobiles came crawling along to ascertain what it was all about. Click thought how weird the shimmering metal beehive had appeared when he had first beheld it floating like a bubble in the air, and realized how much more of a spectacle it was now, a thousand or fifteen hundred feet up in the air, glittering in the slanting sunlight of mid-afternoon.

No wonder that automobilists, glancing upward, suddenly turned from their course to come tearing along the branch highway, jolting and rattling along the last few dust-covered miles.

The roadway around the fence was blocked. Black automobiles parked before the torn section as thick as iron filings clustering to the ends of a magnet.

Kendall looked up.

“We seem to be drifting to the southwest,” he said.

Professor Wagner, stripped of shirt, was watching his daughter’s skillful fingers as she packed antiseptic lint into the puncture in his shoulder.

“That’s the wind, a gentle northeast breeze. I don’t care about that. It’s the height. How are we staying up?”

“I should say we were holding our elevation pretty well.”

The lines of the scientist’s pain-tortured face relaxed a bit.

“Mathematically we should be rising a trifle. The heated air must have an up current. And there should be a slight drift to the westward. That Is, the motion of the earth should not entirely be counteracted by the motion of the atmospheric blanket. However, we’ll take a look at that presently. In the meantime, we’ve got to complete our preparations.”

“Keep a sharp watch,” snapped the girl.

Click resumed his station.

His mind seethed with a tumbling confusion of thoughts. It was impossible to concentrate. Try as he might, no single line of thought could shut out the overwhelming influx of new sensations.

He knew the country well. He could recognize many of the ranches as places where he had hunted. Now the country seemed strangely new, viewed from this angle. It was so different from riding in an airplane. Here was no roaring of motors, no shrieking of wind, no altering perspective. Nor was it quite the same as being in a balloon.

A drifting shadow came scudding over the ground. Click wondered what was causing that shadow. A rushing shape screamed past his window, just below. The bell rocked and spun with the twisting air currents.

“There’s an airplane come to look us over!” yelled Click.

Professor Wagner muttered his irritation.

“I’ll attend to them,” he snapped.

Click returned to his window, located the shadow, then peered from one of the windows in the side.

He knew that plane. It was Bill Savier, an old-timer in the game, and with him was a helmeted individual who fairly screamed “newspaper reporter” to Click’s trained eye.

The Graflex camera covered with a wooden shield to protect the bellows, the whipping coat, the grease-stained collar, all told their own story. Here was a reporter snatched from a desk and rushed aloft by a frantic editor.

The plane banked so the reporter could get a better picture. The lens of the Graflex glittered darkly as it was pointed at the bell.

And then, suddenly, the plane vanished. It simply wasn’t. Click saw blue sky, unbroken by any flitting plane as it banked and wheeled.

He looked down at the window in the floor, and gasped.

The plane was far, far below, a mere speck, zooming upward with all the power of its mighty motor. And it actually seemed to be falling, so rapid was the ascent of the bell. There was a bursting sensation in his eardrums. A sudden nausea gripped him.

He felt weak, tried to shout, but was unable to do more than make a few squeaky noises in his throat.

The ground below that had been so plainly visible, seemed mantled by a haze. The timbered hills had flattened out until they were only a dark stretch of green. The winding ribbon of the river had become a thread so fine as to be almost invisible. There was a rushing scream of whipping air skidding past the pointed dome of the bell, a strange rocking sensation.

Centerberry, which had been far in the distance, seemed right below. It was not possible to see individual buildings. The entire city showed as a mere cluster of checkered squares, and those squares, as fine as the meshes of a tea strainer, Click knew were, in reality, full city blocks.

Chapter 3 Defying Gravity

The professor was shouting.

“I didn’t do that. We’re out of control, falling upward!”

“Falling upward?” asked Click, suddenly having recovered his voice.

“Falling upward. Something’s happened — no, wait. Look at those controls. Quick, the gun!”

Professor Wagner, his bandaged shoulder bare, his suspenders flapping about his scrawny legs, made one swift reach for the revolver, approached the inner shell, and flung open a door.

“Come out!” he shouted.

Click realized, suddenly, that his laboring lungs were crying in vain for life-giving air. He was weak, dizzy, seeing things as in a dream.

He saw a man come staggering out of the inner shell. He noticed that this man’s face was warped in a smile of triumph.

“The oxygen tanks, Dad!” shouted the girl. “They’re jammed, won’t open.”

Professor Wagner gave Click the gun.

“Keep him covered. Be careful how you move. When you walk just tap the tips of the toes gently on the floor.”

Then he backed away.

Click realized why he had the dreamlike impression of objects when he saw the manner in which Professor Wagner backed away.

He merely tilted backward, slowly, as though he were making the motions in a slow motion picture camera. Then he tapped a toe gently on the floor and sailed through the intervening space to the table. He thrust over a lever, slid the button along the grooved guide.

Click was panting for air, suffocating. He saw that the man on whom he trained the gun was in as bad a way. He staggered about as though he would have fallen had it not been for the suspended power of gravitation. As it was, he wobbled weakly back and forth, swaying like a bit of seaweed swinging to the ocean currents. His face was the color of putty.

Then, as Professor Wagner pulled the slide over, there was a sudden tug of gravitation. Click felt his legs buckle under the quick pull, braced himself, felt that he would give much for a single breath of air, then crashed to the floor.

Almost instantly he felt light again, felt a peculiar sense of ease. He saw the professor swimming in the air above him, approaching the inner shell. He heard the rasp of metal, and then the professor came plunging out, like a trout darting through a shaded pool.

“He — had — the other set of controls. Had one of the windows open — oxygen escaped — air rarefied, cold. We’re falling now. Won’t be long, better air — turn that compressed air cock.”

Click saw the face of the girl. It was a purplish hue of convulsed agony. He saw her turn a valve, heard a hissing stream of escaping air, felt his eardrums swell until it seemed they would burst, and then his lungs sent great gulps of life-giving air into his blood.

Professor Wagner had stood the ordeal the best of any, notwithstanding the shock of the wound in his shoulder. And he was cool, alert, vigorously watchful.

“All right, Kendall. Feel better now? Watch through that floor window. I’ll watch the instruments. We’re falling with gravitation accelerated a thousand per cent. We’ve got to watch out.”

Click pressed his face to the window.

The earth was leaping up to meet him.

“Too fast!” he yelled.

Professor Wagner flipped his wrist.

It seemed that ten thousand crushing hands pressed Click’s body to the floor. He tried to move, couldn’t. It was all he could do to breathe.

In an agony of suspense he watched the rushing ground.

He felt a slight ease in the pressure, caught a breath, turned, and saw Professor Wagner’s face set in taut lines.

“Something’s wrong,” gasped the professor. “Shouldn’t act like this. Some factor overlooked! But we’ve got to stop. Hold fast!”

His wrist twitched. The lever moved.

It seemed as though a ton of water pressed Click down and down. The very metal of the floor seemed to bulge out with the pressure.

The ground was still far away, but it was rushing up rapidly. They were almost over Centerberry now. The buildings rushed into view. The squares were like those of a checkerboard, grew until they were as patterned linoleum.

The terrific pressure increased. The ground hesitated in its mad upward rush. The pressure upon Click’s chest relaxed enough so he could breathe.

Click could see the streets, the people scurrying about like ants, the moving automobiles, the belching smokestacks, the tangle of tracks in the railroad yards, the spires of churches, the roofs of buildings.

Closer and closer came the ground. The pressure was terrific. The buildings zoomed up, seemed rushing into his very face. He couldn’t breathe. The air that had been in his lungs whooshed out. He felt that he would rather die a thousand deaths than suffer such agony.

He felt a relief in the cruel pressure and managed to raise his face. A welcome flood of air was in his lungs. He gave a great gasp.

Then suddenly every bit of pressure was relieved. He was as light as he had been before. He saw Professor Wagner draw the back of his left hand over his head while his injured right arm dangled at his side.

“A close squeak, a mighty close call. We developed too much acceleration falling through the rarefied upper atmosphere,” rasped the professor. “I threw it back to stop it, but even with gravitation accelerated to twice normal falling speed the check was so great that it nearly crushed us with momentum. I’m afraid there’s some factor that’s escaped my calculations. But we managed to check ourselves, and just in time, too. Look out and see where we are and what happened.”

Click glanced downward, gasped.

He found that the shell had finally come to a stop not more than a hundred feet above the tops of the office buildings in the main business district of Centerberry.

Just below him were the intersections of Main Street, First Avenue, and Center Square. And those intersections were thronged with people. Every face was upturned. They had detected the strange metal container as it hung poised above them.

Traffic had stopped. People stood exactly as they had paused to look up. Some were halfway across the streets. Some were entering stores.

Then people began to swarm out of buildings, into the street. Even stalled automobiles debouched their startled passengers.

The shell drifted gently downward. The tops of the buildings became closer. Then the metal actually dropped into the canon between the buildings, drifting over the heads of the people as a drifting soap bubble. People became panicky, ran for shelter, trampled and jostled in a squirming mass.

“We’re getting lower and lower,” shouted Click, and turned to see if Professor Wagner was aware of their danger. To his consternation he found that the professor had fainted, that his daughter was bent over him solicitously.

The shell was down below the seventh floors of the buildings now, drifting ever downward. It got closer to the north side of the street, finally brushed against the windows of the building. Those windows were black with packed humanity.

Click could see their faces, see the startled eyes, big with wonder, could even see their lips moving in shouts. But no sound penetrated to the interior of the shell.

The man on the floor, who had become unconscious when the oxygen content of the air had been sucked out through the open window in the interior shell, stirred.

As lightly as a bit of thistle down blown by a gentle breeze, the metal shell rubbed along against the office building. Click saw that it was the McKinstry Building, even recognized one of the stenographers who stared with popping eyes at the shell.

And the strange metal structure was settling lower and lower. People ran screaming from its path. A policeman had drawn his revolver, was pointing it upward threateningly. The beehive was trapped in the canon of city streets. The wind held it against the north side of the street, plastered it against the buildings.

Click jumped to the metal table. There was a lever and a slide button in a metal groove. He didn’t understand the function of the lever, but he saw on the grooved slide the figures which had been etched into the metal.

Click noticed the button. It was almost at a point marked with a zero, but it was not quite on the line. He pushed on the button, gingerly shoved it until it was exactly on the etched line opposite the zero.

“Father’s in bad shape. Too much strain, too much shock. We’ve got to get him to bed,” said the girl.

And then, as Click moved to help her, she picked up the unconscious form by the simple expedient of pinching her thumb and forefinger in the waistband of his trousers.

For a moment Click could not believe his eyes. Then he remembered the sliding indicator with the button set at “Gravitation zero.”

“May I help?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I can manage all right. You keep your eyes on that fellow on the floor. You can’t take any chances with him.”

The inner door slammed.

Chapter 4 A Good Newspaper Man

Apparently the girl had failed to notice that they were drifting down the main street of Centerberry, creating a veritable panic of interest.

Click thrilled to the opportunity. Busy with her father, nursing him, getting him safely in bed, seeing that the bandaged shoulder was made comfortable, the girl wouldn’t notice the motions of the shell. It was a chance for Click to experiment.

He glanced once more at the figure on the floor, then suddenly awoke to his original mission. The shell was holding its elevation now, rising very slightly on the warm currents of air that shimmered against the sides of the office buildings.

But the offices of the Centerberry Bugle were only a block down the street, and the wind was drifting the metal shell against the buildings, almost directly in line with the newspaper offices.

There was paper and pencil in his pocket, and Click fell to scribbling rapid notes, printing the letters large so the notes could be held against a window and read.

He looked out. The Bugle offices were but a matter of windows away. Click rushed to the round loopholes.

The wind brushed the shell against the building. It bumped, bounced, rolled and bumped again. Then the windows of the Bugle loomed before him. He looked squarely into the eyes of the city editor. That individual’s face ran a gamut of emotions. He yelled an order over his shoulder.

The shell drifted lightly by the window, came to the next. Here were men, packed to the frame, gawking outward. There was a rustle of motion and the men cleared from the window as though by magic. Click held the message against the three-inch plate glass. Would they copy it? What was the matter?

A round lens was thrust up against the office window frame. He could see a photographer focusing his camera upon the message.

It was a clever idea. They’d photograph the message, it would be quicker than copying. Click wished he’d said more.

But there was no time. The photographer nodded, jerked out a plate holder, ran to the next window, tried again, nodded.

Click crossed to the metal table, pulled the button over to “-2.”

There was a lurch, a scraping of the building against the metal of the shell, and then the windows of the structure shot past with the smooth velocity of an express elevator.

Click realized that the shell went upward with an accelerating velocity, equal to the acceleration of a falling body.

A hundred, five hundred, a thousand feet up shot the metal container. Click moved the sliding button to zero. The ball continued to go up. Then Click realized that the momentum of the shell was taking them on up. It would be necessary to overcome that momentum.

Click pulled the button over to plus two.

Instantly things happened.

There was a peculiar sensation of arrested motion. His heart gave a few panicky beats, but there was no sliding toward the roof as he had expected. Instead, everything remained as before, save for that peculiar sensation of arrested motion.

He looked about him, rubbed his eyes.

Then it dawned upon him. Gravitation had taken hold of everything alike. But weight had returned to his body. His blood weighed twice as much. The strain of lifting it was that much more of a burden on his heart; but only for a few beats. Then the new gravitation had compensated itself.

Had the shell been stationary, his body would weigh twice as much, but the shell was floating in the air. If it fell, his body fell equally fast. It was only when the motion was checked that gravity had a chance to tell.

Of a sudden Click remembered the trouble Professor Wagner had encountered in stopping the falling shell. He looked out. Not only had their upward motion ceased, but they were falling.

He moved the control.

The door slammed open from behind him.

“What are you doing?” snapped Dot Wagner. “Is this any time to experiment?”

“We were drifting down into the street,” he explained, but did not bother to tell her of how he had taken advantage of that fact to get the greatest scoop of the century to his newspaper.

She grunted. “Get over and tie that man up. I’ll try the controls.”

She tossed him a bit of rope, and Click tapped his toes upon the floor, propelling himself toward the stowaway.

“Who is this fellow?”

She shook her head. “Ask Father.”

Click tried another question. “Where are we going?”

She pointed upward. “The sky’s the limit.”

“Let’s go.”

She sighed. “Do you know, I’m commencing to like you. You’ve got adaptability, and—”

“Yes,” prompted Click, “and what?”

“And nerve,” she snapped. “Got that man tied up?”

“After a fashion. It’ll hold him from doing anything rash.”

The girl looked about her, touched the lever.

The cage whirled, wobbled back and forth in a swing, for all the world like a compass needle swinging toward the magnetic north. Then, when it had steadied, she pushed a button.

Instantly the ground below began slipping by, not at a very rapid rate of speed, but at a smooth motion that was constantly accelerated.

She moved the gravitation control to negative two, watched the ground below for a second or two, then slipped the button back to zero. The ground drifted and dropped until the shell was over two thousand feet. Then the girl eased over the button so gradually that the shell swung smoothly along at a constant elevation.

She smiled up at Click’s puzzled frown.

“Magnetism,” she said. “You might as well know something about it. Magnetism is the least known force in the world, and the most universal. The world’s a magnet. Even living organisms are magnetic. Also remember that all electricity is, is a force induced by cutting magnetic fields with a wire. We multiply that force by wire that’s in fine coils rotating rapidly. But you can imagine what would happen if a properly energized, properly constructed apparatus suddenly cut the magnetic lines of force about the earth.”

Click waved his hand.

“Whoa there! You’re getting too deep for me. I’ve seen the thing run, and the fact that we’re up here’s proof enough that it works. What I want to know is, when I’m going to get back on my job, and what we’re going to do with his nibs over there. I don’t mind tying up a man to accommodate him; but I don’t want to get mixed up in a kidnaping charge.”

She frowned thoughtfully for a minute, then moved closer, lowered her voice.

“I’ll tell you this much. This man is a dreadful menace; and he’s a murderer.”

Click glanced at the man on the floor.

“He doesn’t look so bad. Those gimlet eyes of his are a little disquieting; but I wouldn’t take him for such a hard case. Looks a little too thoughtful to be a crook type.”

She gave her head an impatient shake, placed a hand on his arm in an earnest attempt at conviction, realized what she had done, and jerked the hand away.

“He’s a scientist. That is, he’d call himself one. He worked in a laboratory, has a good grasp of magnetic sciences and astro-physics. But he’s unscrupulous, a fanatic — and... and... and a murderer.”

“Yes? That’s twice you’ve used that term.”

“Well, it’s not my secret to tell. But his name’s Badger. He worked in one of the laboratories where Father had certain parts of his equipment manufactured. He was shrewd enough to find out what Father was up to. And he realized something of the possibilities of this thing, which is more than many people did. Father had a partner, a young assistant, a frightfully keen chap. He had tuberculosis; but he wouldn’t take any sort of care of himself. He got so worked up over this idea he worked on it night and day. Father trusted him, told him a lot. Badger kidnaped this man, held him out all one night, threatening all sorts of dire things if the man wouldn’t talk. As a result he caught cold and died.”

The man on the floor raised his voice.

“I don’t know what she’s telling you, but I know it’s false. I’m merely an innocent stowaway, searching for a thrill. I demand that I be given my liberty.”

The girl paid no attention to him.

“You have no idea what this invention means commercially. Father is interested in it purely from a standpoint of scientific investigations. Commercially it’s worth millions and millions.

“You saw the three men who tried to kidnap me. When they knew Father had achieved success they would have stopped at nothing. They planned to hold me captive, and force Father to ransom me by giving them a share of the profits, or else to force Father to divulge his secret to them.

“I tell you, there’s so much potential wealth in this thing that murder becomes a mere nothing to the men who want to solve the secret.”

Click turned her words over in his mind.

“What’ll you do with this chap? Drop down and turn him loose?”

“Certainly not! He knows too much now. He had an opportunity to study the mechanism. He’d ask for nothing better than to be put out. By the time we returned he’d have the whole invention exploited for all it was worth.”

“Well, what, then? Will your father call off his trip of interstellar exploration?”

“You should know Dad better than that. He warned me not to give him an opiate, but I did it just the same. He’ll sleep a few hours. When he awakes, no power on earth can keep him from starting on his journey. You understand that money and glory mean but little to him. He’s after scientific data.”

“But,” protested Click, “this man Badger will be a menace to him when your father returns.”

“We’ll handle that when the time comes. But you must remember the chances are about a hundred to one against our returning. And if we do not, we aren’t going to leave our secret behind us, in the hands of an unscrupulous scoundrel.”

Click Kendall rubbed his chin.

“Well, then, how about me?”

“Why, you’re going, too, of course. We couldn’t leave you behind to publish what you’ve found out.”

“And I’m not to be allowed back on earth, not even to send messages?”

She smiled, and shook her head.

“Of course not, silly! That’s just what we don’t want you to do — send messages.”

Badger stirred, attempted to sit up.

“You’ll pay for this,” he croaked.

The girl paid no attention whatever to him, but glanced at the terrain below.

“This is a good place,” she remarked, and manipulated the lever and slide. Instantly the car slowed to a stop, wobbled back and forth like a gob of wax on the end of some invisible string.

Then it slowly settled.

Below was a wild, wooded country. There was no sign of habitation. The level rays of the setting sun showed dark green foliage, winding rivers, occasional meadows. There was no sign of any road, no house, no fence.

Dorothy Wagner flung open the door, thrust out her head.

“Come and look at it. It’s delightful. We’re only about a thousand feet up. You can even smell the pines.”

Click joined her at the door. The balmy air was soothing to his nostrils. Over the country lay the calm hush of a warm twilight.

“What do we do now?”

“Wait.”

“For what?”

“For Father to wake up.”

“And then?”

She did not answer in words, but pointed her finger up at the darkening sky.

Badger struggled with his cords, flung himself about on the floor, but was unable to gain his freedom. At length he subsided, muttering rumbled threats.

The last rays of the sun were swallowed up by the golden horizon. Dusk gave place to darkness. In wordless silence the two in the doorway drank in the scenery.

Each engrossed with thoughts, they watched the stars silently appear, swing upward. Below, the world lay black and mysterious. Once there was the flicker of a light. Far to the north a camper built a small camp fire which sent its red light flickering over the tree tops. Away to the east a glow in the sky marked the location of a city.

After an hour the eastern horizon glowed, lighted, and the rim of a moon climbed into dazzling sight. Within a few minutes it hung suspended, clear of the mountain rims.

Chapter 5 Into Space

There was the sound of a door opening. Abruptly, lights came on, flooding the place with eye-aching brilliance. Professor Wagner stood in the doorway of the cone, his eyes glittering with hectic intensity.

“Dot, you gave me an opiate.”

She met his accusing gaze.

“I did what I thought was best, Father.”

He pointed toward the circle of the moon.

“Do you want us to get tangled up in the gravitational field of that moon?”

“What would it do, Father?”

“Do? It would delay us hours, days, perhaps trap us in the cold clutch of a dead satellite! No moons for me! I want to get out and see something of the solar system. I want planets, life, atmosphere. Quick! Let’s go!”

Badger again flopped about in struggling panic.

“It’s kidnaping, murder!” he cried.

“Close that door, hold everything!” snapped Professor Wagner, and placed his thumb upon the sliding button.

The lights clicked off. There was a sensation of sudden motion, and then the scientist’s exulting voice pealed forth a cry of triumph.

“We’re off!”

Click looked through the window in the floor, then recoiled in surprise.

The shell was hurtling upward with such terrific speed the earth seemed to contract upon itself, wither into a shriveled shell. The boundaries of the forest were not apparent. Clusters of lights showed as bordering villages. Those pin-points of lights crowded closer together, became merged in a single blob of brilliance. The larger cities appeared, swept below in an ever narrowing circle.

“What’s that in the west?” he exclaimed.

Before his question could be answered an arched tip appeared over the western circle of earth, grew in size and became a flaming ball of fire. Yet around it was no glow of blue heaven. There was a ribbon of radiance, then black sky. And the ball of fire speedily welled to white, eye-blistering heat.

The sun was rising in the west!

Dorothy Wagner was at his side, watching the spectacle in silence.

Higher and higher came the flaming ball. The earth showed as an arc now, and on the side nearest the sun was a growing ribbon of light.

Click tore his gaze away, turned to her.

“How come?” he asked.

“The sun,” she exclaimed. “It seems to be rising in the west because we’re ascending above the rim of the world. You can see the motion of the earth below us. Look at that range of mountains. See them glittering in the sun. And the earth seems to be slowly revolving. That’s because we’re overcoming some of the momentum with which we were thrown to one side by the envelope of air and the centrifugal force.”

Click could see the earth, showing now as a suggestion of a great ball, outlined against a black void, slowly turning.

“But why is the sky black?”

“The air acts as a light diffuser. If it wasn’t for our atmosphere, the sun would be a ball of fire in a black sky. There would be dazzling light on one side of an object set in its rays, and intense blackness on the other side. You get something of that same effect on the high mountains where the atmosphere is more rare. Ever notice how much blacker the shadows seem, how much more dazzling the light?”

Click nodded. It was just occurring to him that there were a good many physical phenomena he had been taking for granted.

“What’s the strip of sunlight to the west?”

“That’s late afternoon on the Pacific Coast. The sun is just setting there. Later on we’ll be able to see the Pacific Ocean. Then the motion of the earth in its revolution will become more apparent as we get farther away and gradually overcome the force of our outthrust from the rim of the wheel. You see our anti-gravitational force is acting as a centrifugal force resistant.”

“How fast are we going?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“What keeps us from being cold now that we’ve passed the atmosphere?” asked Click.

“You’ve seen a thermos bottle?” she countered. “Well, this is made on the same principle; and remember we are surrounded by a vacuum.”

Sighing, Click relaxed himself to a contemplation of seeing the earth through the eyes of a solar wanderer. He was out in the solar system, tickling the edges of the universe, and something of the terrific, mind-paralyzing nature of infinity was beginning to permeate his brain.

Below him the earth showed as a mighty sphere. The sun glowed as a white-hot ball of fire against a perfectly black sky, raised some twenty degrees from the arc of the earth’s crust.

The motion of the earth was now readily apparent. It swung in a long sweep of increasing speed. The Sierra Nevada Range was now being swept into the twilight zone. The glittering sweep of Pacific Ocean showed as a long expanse. The shore line of Lower California and Mexico was sharply marked. To the north, where Oregon and Washington merged into the coast line, there were fogs which reflected the dazzling light of the sun in eye-bewildering brilliance.

It was sunset in California. Deserts, mountains, orange groves, plateaus, fertile river valleys were all being swept into the curtain of dusk. Over to the east was midnight. Yet the moon illuminated the earth with enough light to make certain features of the crust apparent.

The Atlantic coast line showed as a dim glow. Click fancied he could detect a difference in the illumination that must represent the big cities of the seaboard, New York and vicinity. But he was not certain that that which he mistook for brilliance of illumination was not really caused by a local fog.

Professor Wagner switched on the light, beamed about him.

“My children, this is the happiest moment of my life.”

Badger croaked hoarsely.

“Well, make the most of it, because it’s about the last of your life. I could have taken this invention and made something out of it. We’d have been millionaires. But you had to go and start this crazy expedition. Now your secret will perish with you.”

The professor shrugged his shoulders.

“That may be. But I have had the thrill of going where no mortal has ever ventured before. Oxygen tanks working perfectly. Compressed air releasing smoothly. Temperature constant, speed accelerating. Wonderful! Who could wish for any greater triumph to crown a life of hard work?”

Click interpolated a comment.

“But can we get back?”

The professor waved his hands, palms outward.

“Back! Who wants to get back? It will take us a lifetime to explore the universe, and then we’ll only have touched one or two highlights.”

Badger groaned.

“Oh, Lord, he’s crazy as a bedbug. Mister, you and I are trapped. Our only hope is to overpower him and take the machine back.”

Professor Wagner whipped a revolver from his belt, using his unwounded arm with swift grace.

“Badger, you’ve murdered, you’ve robbed, you’ve stopped at nothing to steal the secret I’ve worked out. Now I warn you, if I catch you so much as lifting a finger to interfere, I shall shoot you as I would a dog!”

Cowed, Badger lapsed into surly, menacing silence. Click turned away, repressing a momentary shudder of apprehension. He looked out of the floor window.

The shell had developed terrific speed, with no atmosphere to retard it. And it was an awesome spectacle. The globe still subtended a great arc, but it showed as a rotating ball, shadowed with seas, glittering with continents. Majestic mountain ranges billowed in reflecting clouds, or raising glittering snowcapped mountains.

Click looked upward.

The moon was getting larger. Their constant acceleration had piled up a most terrific momentum.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Professor Wagner laughed, flipped a hand toward the rotating globe below.

“Time? My boy, there is no time! Time is merely an arbitrary division of the period of rotation of that ball below you. You are now in the depths of infinity. There is no clock that can measure infinity. The birth of universes are as but the ticking of the clock of infinity. And that clock measures a something that is beyond measure. We are accustomed to think of eternity as something vague and intangible that comes into existence after our individual deaths. You are in eternity now. It is all about you. You are a part of eternity. Time indeed! There is no time.”

Professor Wagner took out pencil and paper, did some rapid calculating. Then he approached the lever.

“It’s about time we were building up some side speed. We’re going to have to keep clear of the moon. If we get too close to it we’d either be stalled or flipped off in space like a comet. Let’s see. That lever gives us a side speed of east to west. That should be away from the moon, toward the inferior planets. Now Venus is about twenty-two million miles away in round figures. I believe this is the proper adjustment. I’m going into the inner room with my daughter. We’ll do the navigating from there. You two better get some sleep.

“Look at the earth. See that brilliance it’s throwing off? That’s earthlight, just as we call the moon’s reflected light moonlight. Rather weird, eh? Badger, I’m going to leave you tied up. Kendall, I’m trusting you. Get some sleep, both of you.”

The inner door slammed.

“Good night — Click,” called the girl’s voice.

Badger grunted.

“Crazy as a loon, him and the girl both. Mister, you and I have got to get control of this thing and take it back.”

Kendall laughed.

“Don’t count on me for any treachery. A ship can have but one skipper. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way; and I’m not going to turn you loose. So shut up and get some sleep.”

And, rolling on his side, Click Kendall stretched his length on the floor of the weird craft and went to sleep with the light of a half full earth in his eyes.

Chapter 6 A New World

Hours later Click awoke. It was a sensation of spinning vertigo that brought him to his senses. He found himself suspended in mid-air. The shell was wobbling, twisting, and turning in spinning confusion.

He rubbed his eyes, started to swim through the atmosphere within, found drowsiness again sweeping over him, and dropped off to peaceful oblivion, his limbs gloriously relaxed.

Again he slept. Voices in his ears brought him to. He found himself lying against the floor of the shell. Through the thick glass window in the floor he could see the round surface of a globe.

At first he thought it was the earth; then he realized it was vastly different.

The surface showed a mass of piled-up clouds, and the reflected light from those clouds was such as to dazzle the eye. Through the tops of the cloud masses could be seen the snowcapped peak of a single towering mountain. But for miles and miles the clouds extended in tumbled masses.

Professor Wagner stood at the switchboard control and upon his face was a smile of serene tranquillity. The sun was about quartering, and a portion of the dark side of the planet could be observed.

The girl’s sparkling eyes regarded him with crisp enthusiasm.

“Oh, you’re awake. Lord, how you slept! It’s lucky the navigation wasn’t intrusted to you.”

“Venus?” asked Click.

“Venus,” answered the professor.

“Where’s Badger?”

“Asleep. I gave him an opiate. He was too much of a nuisance.”

Click glanced at the planet again.

“Why all the clouds?”

Professor Wagner squinted at the periscope image.

“Always clouds. That makes it seem logical that it’s inhabited. There’s water vapor in the atmosphere. There’s a high reflecting power. It’s scientifically known as the albedo. The albedo of Venus is 0.76. In other words, the light that is reflected is almost three-fourths of the light received. It’s just about the reflecting power of new snow.”

He flipped the lever, manipulated the slide.

The surface of the billowing clouds came up toward him, dazzling with their brilliance. Then a swirling streamer of cloud stretched misty tentacles toward the shell, swirled about it, and they were enveloped in a white mist.

Darker and darker became the mist. The eyes slowly adjusted themselves to the greater darkness after the white brilliance of the reflecting cloud banks. Lower and lower went the shell, but its progress could only be told by the slithering clouds of moisture which slipped past the sides of the shell.

“Keep a sharp watch for obstacles,” called Professor Wagner. “If you see anything, shout at once.”

Click pressed his face against the floor glass, watched below. There was nothing but fine drifting mist, and through that mist a strange, unreal light penetrated.

And then a bit of mist seemed to congeal, take color.

“Hold everything!” he yelled.

The girl saw it at the same time.

“Something dark below.”

The professor held the shell motionless, then joined them at the floor window.

“Humph,” he said. “The top of a tree. Watch it. We’ll try to avoid the branches.”

He returned to the controls. The shell settled lightly, down, down. The top of the tree slipped past to one side.

“Great heavens! It’s got a diameter of over ten feet right near the top, and some of those branches are regular trees in themselves,” said Dorothy.

Suddenly Click gave a shout. “Life!” he exclaimed. “A bird fell out below and flew away. It was an enormous bird, bigger than our eagles. And it looked as though it wore spectacles.”

Professor Wagner chuckled.

“If some of our contemporaries on the earth could only be with us! But that bird’s flying is a wonderfully favorable sign. It shows that the atmosphere must be equally dense with that of our earth. Gravitation we know is about the same. Ah, here’s another tree to one side. We’re going down between them, and look. Here’s the ground!”

The shell dropped rapidly, checked itself, fluttered to the ground as lightly as a snowflake, then was quickly sent up.

“It’s a regular morass!” exclaimed Click.

“We’ll bounce up and try it over a little farther. Watch out for trees, but I’ll have the gravitation at zero and the speed down to three or four miles an hour. There won’t be much momentum. Here we go.”

The shell drifted through the forest. Overhead the luminous sky reflected dusky light through the ever present mists.

The great trees stretched up in long spires of green. The shell was about twenty-five feet above the ground, floating along like a great soap bubble.

Dorothy gave a shriek.

“A man! Watching us from the tree. Quick, look!”

And there, perched on the limb of a small tree, regarding them with unblinking solemnity, was a man, some four feet in height, clothed in some peculiar texture which seemed a species of silk.

In appearance he was very like an earth man, save for the eyes. Those eyes were apparently without lids, were so large and protruding as to dominate the entire face. The pupils alone were almost an inch in diameter, and they regarded the drifting shell with an owl-like scrutiny of expressionless contemplation.

Professor Wagner guided the shell closer, brought it to a stop, lightly drifting against a tree branch.

The strange creature slipped from the branch, caught a twig with fingers that were somewhat like those of a monkey, and dropped to another branch, hit the trunk, went down it with an agility that no earth human had ever possessed, and disappeared in deep ferns.

Search as they might, they could find no sign of him. He had vanished.

The professor reluctantly set the shell in motion again, drifting at a slow rate of speed. Within half a mile the forest abruptly thinned to a clearing. Bare ground, hard and brown, cleared into a huge circle, was beneath.

“That is undoubtedly the work of man,” said Professor Wagner, and dropped the shell to the ground, brought it to a rest, slipped the gravitational control over to normal, and opened the door.

Moist air came pouring in, air that smelled of mists, dripping green stuffs, decaying wood. Dank, yet warm and pleasant, the air seemed to bathe them as a lukewarm shower.

“All out for Venus!” yelled Professor Wagner.

Click got to his feet, sighed, took a step, and then held back. For into the clearing had suddenly debouched a row of men, marching gravely from the fern-rimmed forest.

“Ah,” sighed Professor Wagner, and stepped to the ground of the planet.

The line of men advanced.

“Look here,” insisted Click, “I don’t like their looks. We’ve got some weapons inside. Let’s get them ready. We may have to fight.”

“Bosh! That is the way hostilities start. Think you we are going to come here and depart without stopping to investigate these inhabitants? We must investigate their flora and fauna, take motion pictures, learn their language, their tribal beliefs, their family life. We can’t do all that by starting a fight.

“Their clothes look like silk. Do you know, I believe those eyes can penetrate the fog. You’ll notice there’s a reddish tinge to the light. The violet rays are absorbed in the upper layers of atmosphere.

“That’s the chief there in front. He’s coming this way. Hold up your hands, palms outward. Hang him, can’t he tell a gesture of friendship? And look at their joints. See how they bulge. That’s probably caused by generations of rheumatism. Gradually they’ve become immune to it, probably, but the joints are remarkably enlarged. They average about four feet. Almost dwarfs, but—”

The line swung at the ends, became a half circle, swept about, darted inward, and the trio found themselves crowded out from their entrance, walled in by the little creatures who surveyed them in austere silence.

“Hello, howdy. We come for a visit.”

Professor Wagner smiled, waved his hands, bowed.

The circle made no motion.

“More men coming out from the forest, Professor,” warned Click in an undertone.

“They’re our friends,” said the professor, and smiled again.

A man stepped forth from the circle.

“That will be the chief. He’s an old man, yet there’s no wrinkling of the skin. Notice how they all appear to be of about the same age,” muttered the professor. “But the chief has certain unmistakable indications of age. He has knotted veins in his temples, and the teeth are worn down. Then there’s his neck. The neck glands are almost invariably deficient in aged persons. Why, look out — the beggar’s hostile!”

“Look out, Father!” shrieked the girl.

For the chief’s lips had twisted back from his gums. He opened his mouth, barked a single shrill word, and lunged forward.

The circle closed. Hands reached out.

Click swung a terrific blow.

To his surprise, the little man side-stepped that blow with an agility that would have done credit to a monkey. Strong hands darted forward, seized his wrists, and Click knew then that these men were incredibly muscular, for the hands bit deeply into his skin, held with a grip of iron.

A twisted strand of some light substance appeared from nowhere, was looped about his hands and twisted over his neck.

From behind him he could see the others were being similarly treated.

The chief opened his mouth again. Another single sound issued forth. And, with that sound, he turned abruptly. Some of the men remained behind with the shell. The others accompanied the chief. And the captives followed, persuaded by a single jerk of the rope that had been placed around their necks.

“We’re going to be taken into the forest. Now we shall see how the men live,” purred the professor.

Chapter 7 Captives on Venus

“Has it occurred to you that they show no surprise at our appearance?” asked the girl abruptly. “They should be surprised at the color of our skins, at our eyes, at our clothes, at our height. But they take us for granted.”

“By George, that’s so!” agreed the professor. “Ah, here’s where they have their village. Notice the manner in which the trees protect them from surprise attacks from above. What enormous trees they are! That one is thirty feet in diameter. It must stretch up for five hundred feet, perhaps more.

“And here are the women. Ugh! How ugly! Evidently they’re closely allied to the animals of our globe as far as sex beauty is concerned. The males have the beauty.”

Click made no comment. His startled eyes surveyed the drab spectacle in the cheerless, dripping forest. Little huts had been made, thatched with broad leaves, lashed with thongs. Overhead a tangled mass of branches dripped globules of moisture in endless cadence upon the echoing leaves.

Ferns had been cleared away to make a little circle before the houses. About this circle the women had gathered. They were even smaller than the men, and their appearance was startling.

They showed as squat, dish-faced creatures, thick of lip, dark of skin, round of eye, low of forehead. Their faces were expressionless, and they made no sound. But Click noticed a peculiar twitching of the nostrils, as though they were sniffing some faint odor.

The chief led the way to a hut. The dwarfs who pulled the prisoners followed. They led the trio inside, gave a deft loop of the neck rope about their ankles, knotted it, and backed out.

There was no sound of conversation coming into the hut from those who clustered in the village. Occasionally a sound of motion, the thud of bare feet on the ground, a hacking cough, would attest to their presence, but there was no conversation.

Professor Wagner closed his eyes, sighed. Click tried to sleep, and could not. There was an atmosphere of tense waiting about the place that was as omnipresent as the everlasting fog.

Steps sounded without the hut.

“I wonder,” began the professor, then suddenly broke off. For to the ears of the men came a strange sound, the sound of a human voice talking as men on the earth talked, although the words were indistinguishable.

“Good heavens!” snapped the professor, and struggled to a sitting posture. “That’s the German language, or I don’t know it when I hear it. What’s this? What’s this?”

“I told you,” reminded his daughter, “that they didn’t show any curiosity. They’ve seen people like us before.”

“Tut, tut,” snapped the professor. “We’re the first earth mortals ever to set foot on Venus.”

But his voice lacked assurance, and made up in irritability what it lacked in conviction.

The door darkened with moving bodies, bearing a shuffling burden. They swayed and tottered with the weight of it as they formed a congested group in the doorway.

Then they crowded through.

They carried a species of stretcher made of saplings across which had been stretched a network of cords. Upon that stretcher a huge form reclined, heaving restlessly, grumbling.

They up-ended the stretcher, and Click found himself gazing into the face of a man, pop-eyed, blond, frightfully obese, the skin bleached of color.

The man sputtered a stream of German at them.

Professor Wagner rattled a reply in English.

“We don’t speak German. Do you speak English? How did you happen to arrive here? When did you arrive? How? What are these people? Do they have a language? Do you speak it? Are you a captive, or are you treated as a guest?”

The fat neck rolled the huge head from side to side.

“Nein, nein, nein. Ach Gott, nein!”

“Can you speak any German?” demanded Professor Wagner.

Click Kendall shook a reluctant head. It was a language of which he knew nothing. And that ignorance seemed in a fair way to shut them out from all understanding with the strange creatures who held them captive.

“The man evidently isn’t held as a captive. He’s treated with some respect,” muttered Click.

“Crippled with rheumatism,” added the professor. “Notice the enlarged joints, the peculiar posture of the fingers. It’s a bad case, and the heart is evidently impaired. You can see the blue lips, the discolored finger nails. Truly this is a great disappointment, to think that our remarkable voyage has been anticipated by other scientists, and that these scientists are of another nation.”

“Look, Father! He’s trying to make signs.”

The man on the stretcher slowly and laboriously raised an arm. He tried to make a gesture, but broke off in a groan. Perspiration stood out upon the forehead. The pop eyes puckered in agony.

With a sigh the man collapsed back to immobility. He shook his head, groaned, gutturaled another sentence in German, then smiled a wan smile.

The squat men clustered on either side regarded the scene in unblinking silence. Their eyes, looking like twin lenses of a huge camera, turned from time to time as they exchanged glances.

“I’m afraid it’s hopeless. Was there ever such a tantalizing situation?” exclaimed Professor Wagner.

Again there was a commotion before the door of the hut, and then two of the squat natives entered bearing between them a human burden. It was Badger, bound hand and foot, his face gray with fright, his vest-button eyes fixed with terror.

“You speak German?” shouted the professor.

Badger nodded.

The pop-eyed man on the stretcher saw that nod, interpreted it correctly. His blue lips parted and rattled forth a long string of conversation.

And Badger settled the question of his linguistic ability by replying in smooth German, speaking rapidly, making gestures from time to time.

“Ah!” sighed Professor Wagner. “At last we have solved our difficulties. Ask him if these men intend to do us harm, Badger.”

But Badger paid no attention to the command.

For more than fifteen minutes the two chattered on. The little men sat hunched about, apparently without curiosity. Their huge, lidless eyes remained motionless. Their breathing was deep and regular. They showed no emotion, gave no faintest flicker of facial expression.

Then it became apparent that the conversation had drifted to the three who lay listening with such eager curiosity.

Badger pointed toward them, indulged in a rattle of conversation. The German nodded, looked at the three, and his eyes clouded with hostility.

Again he looked at Badger.

“Treachery!” snapped Click. “That bird’s double crossing us.”

“Hush!” whispered the girl. “We have got to make him our ally. Otherwise we won’t have any means of communicating with these people.”

The German rolled his head, turned his pop eyes upon one of the natives, and muttered a single sound. It was one of those crisp, explosive words such as the chief had used.

The native got to his feet, left the hut without a word of reply.

Badger turned to the others.

“Well, I guess you folks are wondering what it’s all about,” he said. “You see, it’s this way. This chap, Carl Gluckner, was working on a new type of aerial warship during the World War. He discovered a peculiar ray that had remarkable properties, but he couldn’t control that ray. At length he made himself a metallic house somewhat similar to ours, made it airtight, constructed it to withstand terrific pressure from within, and determined to explore the upper atmosphere.

“He’s a little indefinite about it, and I think he’s perhaps trying to confuse me on the nature of his invention. That’s only natural, anyway. But he, and four companions, started out. They tuned up their ray, directed it beneath them, and found they were ascending with such terrific velocity that they lost all control of the car. Gluckner says he was unconscious because of being thrown against the floor, the acceleration was so great.

“They were in the interplanetary regions for seven days. Then they managed to control the ray somewhat, and, by using it in short intervals with a greatly reduced current, were able to effect a landing. But the machine was pretty badly smashed when they landed. They came down not far from here, and the natives tried to capture them.

“They had rifles, and turned loose, killing more than a hundred. But the little beggars don’t seem to have any great fear of death. When they start to do a thing, they do it. Sheer force of numbers told the story, and they overpowered the expedition. They killed Gluckner’s companions, but held him for purposes of observation.

“He’s managed to learn their language. Says it’s a simple affair that’s like certain of the primitive African tribes. He’s sent for the chief. Here comes the chief now.”

The little man entered the hut, stood for a moment before Gluckner, regarding him in unwinking gravity. Then he muttered a single word.

Gluckner answered slowly, laboriously. He used five separate words, rolled his eyes, waited, then put together a slow, halting sentence, hesitating between each word as though to let the brain of the chief absorb the expression.

The chief turned his camera eyes to Badger, took from his robe a huge diamond that had been shaped into a knife, and slit Badger’s bonds with a single stroke of the razor edge.

“Good heavens,” exclaimed the professor; “that knife is a diamond; unpolished, but a diamond, nevertheless.”

The chief approached the others, bent over the girl, cut her bonds, then straightened and put the knife back in his girdle.

“But how about Father and Mr. Kendall?” asked Dorothy.

Badger shook his head.

The chief grunted again.

Two men armed with spears entered the hut.

The men each took an arm of the girl, led her outside the door.

Click glanced at Badger.

That individual was smiling, a loose-lipped, crafty smile.

The girl’s steps died away. The steady drip, drip, drip of the mournful forest rattled on the leaf roof of the hut. And then that fog-filled air was knifed by a single piercing scream.

Click struggled frantically with his bonds.

“The girl. She’s in danger. Quick, turn us loose, go see what it is!” he told Badger.

Badger went to the door of the hut. His manner was that of one who strolls casually. For an instant he stood within the entrance, then vanished. His feet could be heard on the ground, running.

Click struggled with his body, writhing, twisting, trying to get free, hardly conscious of what he was doing. One of the guards arose, picked up a spear and thrust the sharp end against Click’s throat.

Click glanced up into the expressionless eyes, jerked his head toward the doorway.

“Can’t you let me go to help her?” he asked, forgetting that the man could not understand his language.

His only answer was a tightening of the pressure where the spear pushed against his throat.

Click subsided. The spear had punctured his skin, was pushing against the tender spot of his throat. He concluded that he was to be murdered in cold blood.

“Nein, nein,” warned Gluckner.

The pressure relaxed. Shod footsteps came strolling along the packed ground outside the hut. Badger’s grinning face appeared in the doorway.

“She just saw a snake,” he remarked. “Said to forgive her for screaming.”

And then he turned to Gluckner and rattled off a long discourse. Gluckner shook his head once, then talked swiftly for more than a minute.

Badger yawned, stretched, nodded, turned to the professor.

“Pity you don’t speak German. Some of this information is well worth hearing. He says the heat on the central portion of the illuminated disk is unbearable. That no one lives there except a race of people that are close kin to the things we call apes. They’re hairy and live in the trees. This tribe represents about the highest order of civilization he’s seen; but he hasn’t made a complete exploration of the planet.

“The same face is always turned toward the sun, just as the same face of the moon is always turned toward the earth. That means there’s one side that has perpetual night. There’s a peculiar sort of mushroom growth that attains gigantic proportions in the night zone. And the borderland is peopled by a race of ferocious warriors.

“They use a sort of blowpipe and have a missile that’s got some toadstool preparation on it. It causes a painful death within about three hours of the time it’s absorbed into the system.

“These people aren’t very warlike, but they have a certain callousness to all forms of pain or suffering. They’re something like wild animals of a low order of intelligence. Yet they’re human all right. It’s what Gluckner calls ‘undeveloped soul ego.’ There’s a German name he uses that’s hard to translate.

“Well, I’m going out and walk around and see if I can make better friends with these natives. So long.”

He strolled to the door, muttered a sentence in German, and then went out.

Gluckner regarded the bound pair for a moment with pop eyes that seemed to contain some element of doubt. Once more he sought to raise his hand and make motions, but the effort was futile. The rheumatism had made his joints almost immovable. He sighed, barked a single explosive order, and the natives took hold of the stretcher, bore him outside.

There remained three guards watching them with unblinking camera eyes. About them the fog swirled. The trees dipped their mournful protest against the dismal environment. The reddish glow of waning light gradually began to tell on Kendall’s nerves.

Perspiration slimed his body from the effort of his struggles. The thongs bit into his wrists, and Click noticed that they developed a slime as the perspiration came in contact with them. There was a gelatinous something in the substance that softened in water. An idea seized him.

He worked his hands back and forth — up and down — sliding one over the other, trying to slip his bonds over his wrists, seeking to get as much perspiration on them as possible.

He noticed that the reddish light was becoming less bright. There seemed to be a pall settling down. Things lost their color, became drab. It was harder to see. The air seemed quivering with suspense.

“Thought it didn’t get dark here,” he said to Professor Wagner.

“Most strange. It cannot be night as we know it. Yet there is undoubtedly some obscuration of the sun. Perhaps there is an eclipse caused by some minor satellite. After all, the question of a small satellite for Venus has caused astronomical arguments at various times.”

The guards became restive, uneasy. The darkness grew more profound.

Then came a terrific crashing noise in the forest. It sounded as though millions of feet were tearing through the foliage, smashing branches.

Chapter 8 Horror in the Dark

“Rain!” exclaimed Click.

And it was rain, such as terrestrial residents never experienced. More like a thundering cloudburst it came. The trees bent and swayed. The beating drops, larger than any Click had experienced, came hissing through the foggy air, spattered upon the soggy ground.

The guards peered out of the door, turned their great eyes upon each other. Click could see them as shadowy outlines vaguely visible against the curtain of pouring water which covered the doorway.

Then came other forms. The doorway was blocked with struggling figures that paused long enough to make explosive remarks, single syllables of alarm.

In the confusion Click managed to plunge his arms in a pool of water which seeped through the wall of the hut. The water softened his bonds, made them as slippery as so much wet seaweed. He slipped his arm down until his right hand could grasp his knife which had been left in his pocket. A few seconds and he was free.

He rolled over to Professor Wagner.

“I’m cutting your ropes,” he hissed in a shrill warning, audible over the crash of the storm.

Click slit the ropes. “Come on,” he ordered.

The professor arose, followed.

The two fugitives slipped out into the darkness. Instantly they were drenched to the skin. Yet the rain was warm, almost tepid. The fog still swirled through the moisture. The trees steamed, and the darkness was that of a foggy night.

“I believe these fellows can see in the dark,” said Click. “Better keep to the shadows. Let’s try ducking into the first shelter we can find.”

A doorway loomed before them. So dark was it that they were almost upon it before it became visible.

They dived inside.

“Here’s where I find a spear,” promised Click, as he groped about.

Of a sudden his groping hands touched clammy human skin. He jumped back, bracing himself for attack.

There was a guttural exclamation from the darkness.

“Gluckner!” exclaimed Click.

“Ja, ja,” came eagerly from the darkness.

A sudden inspiration seized Click; perhaps the man spoke French. And Click knew a little something of that language. His execution was atrocious, but it had served to get him by before.

He tried to bring his mind to work upon his slender vocabulary. The result was a few stuttering words that ventured upon the darkness and were abruptly swallowed in an enthusiastic burst of voluble French from the German.

Click gave a sigh of relief. Why hadn’t he thought of French before? But the events had been so exciting, so unusual, and Badger had been so ready with his flow of German that it had entirely escaped his mind that the German would very probably know French.

Click interrupted the rapid flow of words and ordered the man to speak more slowly.

“Ask him what is the trouble,” said Professor Wagner.

Click tried to frame the question.

Gluckner caught the idea and answered it slowly in simple words.

“Rain. Once a month it comes; sometimes oftener. It is in those times that the people from the dark side attack. They have eyes that see well in the dark. The natives of this side see but indistinctly. I see not at all. These men see through the fog, but not the darkness. You understand?”

Click gave a swift translation.

“Yes, yes,” purred the pleased professor. “Now ask him about the satellite. Is it true there is a small satellite? And ask him—”

Click interrupted. “How about the girl? Where is she?”

The German grunted.

“The girl? You do not know? The wife of the man Badger? She was the ransom price given to the chief for the liberty of that man.”

“What?” yelled Click.

The German repeated. “She becomes the wife of the chief. Otherwise he could not have her for a wife. He could take her, but that is against the law. Captives can be slaves, but not wives. So the man Badger sells his wife to the chief for his liberty. It is not that which one should do, but—”

From the rain-soaked darkness without came a fierce yell of wild menace. There was the sound of rushing bodies.

“The night people! They come. It is bad.”

A body staggered against the doorway. A huge shape blotted out what little gray light seeped through this opening.

Click could hear the sound of a blow, a mortal groan. Something slumped to the floor.

He had a vague sense of something rushing toward him.

He hurtled forward, driving his right in a swing, slipping his knife in his left hand.

The right connected. There was the jar of impact, a whoosh as one who has had his breath knocked from him, and then great hands clasped the wrist that held the knife. The weight of a body was thrown against him.

From the darkness he heard the German’s voice.

“They are big men, these people of the night. Beware their fangs. They tear throats with their teeth, these night men.”

Click sensed the warning, flung himself backward.

In the darkness there was the gnashing sound of fangs clashing together. Hot breath was on his throat, steaming in his nostrils.

He flung his right across and over. The blow landed on the creature’s jaw, staggered him. Click tried to free his left, and then felt himself beaten to the ground.

Rushing shapes swept through the hut as football players thunder down a field.

The inert bulk of his adversary fell on him, shielded him. He could hear spears thudding into the ground, heard men falling to their death. The smell of blood was in the steaming air. The rattle of dying men sounded above the pelting roar of the rain.

Click squirmed, twisted, finally worked his way out from under the enormous body that had covered him. His hand encountered a spear thrust into the ground. He pulled it out, staggered to a corner of the hut, braced himself for attack.

But the conflict had swirled out of the hut, gone on to a more remote portion of the village.

“Professor,” he called cautiously.

There was no answer. The interior of the hut was silent.

Click felt his way forward. His feet encountered a body. His hand stretched out in exploration. Instinctively he knew it to be one of the night people. The body was huge, cold, clammy. A spear was driven clear through the breast, well into the ground.

His hand encountered another body; this time it was the night man he had knocked out with his swinging punch. The man stirred slightly.

Click’s hand went over the features. He shuddered as he felt the mort slime of wide open eyes, staring straight up, unconscious. The eyes were as big as the palm of his hand.

He pushed on. His hand encountered the side of the stretcher. He felt for the German. He encountered the outlines of the huge body, the gnarled limbs with their twisted joints. He felt for the head, and drew back in horror.

Evidently it had been some species of war club that had finished Herr Gluckner. But he was finished, completely and conclusively finished.

A sudden horror rippled Click’s spine.

“Professor! Professor!” he called, raising his voice, shouting as loudly as he could.

There was no answer.

His feet stumbled upon a body. His exploring fingers encountered clothes. It needed but a second to complete the identification. It was the body of Professor Wagner, and he was quite dead, the entire top of the head crushed by a terrific blow of a war club.

Then, over the pelting of the storm, over the hissing sound of the rushing water, the rattling leaves, the swaying, groaning branches, came a sound that was unmistakable. It was the crisp crack of a rifle. Again and again it sounded. Then there was silence once more.

Click flung himself out into the pouring darkness. Water sloshed about his ankles. The green slime of the forest had washed down to the ground, turning it into a soggy mass of slush upon which his feet slipped.

There was nothing to give him the faintest sense of direction except the general idea which he had of the location of the rifle shots. About him in the darkness there was a vague sensation of rushing forms. Occasionally he could hear grunts, groans, blows.

A spear hissed through the darkness, thudded into the bole of a tree. That spear could not have missed his body by more than inches.

From behind him sounded a wild yell, running steps. Instinctively he ducked forward, half spun, collided with a tree trunk, flung himself around it.

There was a puff of explosive sound and something spattered the tree trunk with a peculiar suggestion of vicious force. Click realized it must be a mushroom-poisoned missile from a blow gun.

He whirled, made for the dense forest, then cut in a zigzag, floundering through wet ferns, crashing into slimy trees, constantly inundated with the torrential downpour that emptied itself from the black heavens.

His slithering feet found the slimy mud of the immense clearing in which the shell had landed. He had no very good idea as to his location. Was he on the near side or the far side of that circular clearing? He had no means of ascertaining other than to keep exploring in the hope that he would stumble upon some clew. And stumble upon it he did, for he literally fell over the body of a man.

Swift exploration with his questing fingers disclosed that this was one of the night people, that a bullet hole had accounted for his death. The bullet had torn through his heart and the man had died in his tracks.

The direction of that bullet hole, the way the body was facing, all served to give Click a general idea of the direction he wanted to take.

Of a sudden he realized that it was growing lighter. There was a faint margin of visibility creeping out from the surrounding circle of darkness.

Then to his left, hardly fifteen yards away, there again sounded the deep-throated roar of a rifle. A running figure barely visible in the rapidly increasing light, jumped high in the air, flung up its arms, fell forward, twitching, jerking.

Click saw the outline of the shell, sitting upon the muddy field, the polished sides streaked with moisture, the base spattered with mud. The door was open, and standing just without the door was Badger, the rifle at his shoulder.

Had Badger lowered that rifle and turned, it must have been certain death for Click Kendall. But the cruelty of his nature was too strong. It was not enough that he had merely disabled the runner, Badger wanted to kill him. And so he waited, squinting down the sights of the rifle, his entire face twisted with a ferocious blood lust.

The native struggled to hands and knees, tried to stand, but was unable. He dropped, began to crawl. Badger slammed in another shell. The gun roared forth its summons. The native crashed to the ground, splashing water and mud in a death agony.

Badger lowered the rifle and stepped within the shell. His arm reached to the door, slammed it over.

And Click Kendall managed to just thrust a foot in that door to keep it from slamming shut. His shoulder thrust against it, sent it crashing inward, and charged. His head crashed into the pit of Badger’s stomach. For a moment they hung, locked, poised, then they crashed to the floor.

Badger whipped over his arm, tried to obtain a strangle hold. Click gave no thought to guarding, but sought rather to smash to his objective. He sent his fists in short, jabbing rocking blows, thudding home with all of his shoulder muscles behind them.

His wounded arm sent little shoots of agonized pain racing up his shoulder, stabbing into his very brain. But he persisted.

Badger rolled over, squirmed free, got to his knees. He swung with all his force and the blow caught Click as he came in.

Click felt the nauseating blackness of that blow, but fought grimly to keep his senses. Blood poured from his nose. His eye was swelling. He caught the other off balance, sent his right straight for the chin, a blow that carried momentum behind it.

The fist crashed straight to the button. Badger’s head snapped back. He flung up his hands, crashed over backward. His head thudded against the metal floor of the ship.

Click scrambled to his feet, weak, dizzy, wet.

He floundered to the door, swinging upon its metal ball-bearing hinges. The rain clouds had vanished. The same rosy-hued fog was filling every nook and cranny of the steaming world. Water glistened everywhere.

Chapter 9 Disaster

Click moved to the control table. Had the little men placed the shell out of control? He pushed the slide over to gravitation zero, felt the same sensation of lightness which enabled him to drift about the shell, and sighed his relief. He had a chance, just one chance in a hundred, but he was going to take that chance.

He moved the slide control into the negative segment. The shell slipped upward, bounced from bole to bole, swung from branch to branch as lightly as a bit of thistle. Click possessed himself of the rifle, snapped a shell into the barrel, and searched the unconscious form of Badger.

He found a couple of boxes of shells, found also several rough diamonds of the type which the natives fashioned into knives. Click found a bit of rope, proceeded to tie the man’s hands and feet. Badger fluttered his eyes, groaned.

“Where’s the girl?” demanded Click.

Badger’s swollen lips twisted in an effort to speak.

“Find her!”

Click picked up one of the great diamonds, its hard edge fashioned into a razor edge, held it over Badger’s throat.

“If she’s come to harm—”

The man’s face turned livid with fear.

“No, no. In the inner cone, locked in!”

Click gained the inner door, found it barred, flung it open. Dorothy Wagner was stretched on a cot, bound hand and foot. Her eyes rolled toward the door in an agony of hopelessness, found his, then lit until they were as twin stars.

“Click! You escaped! You came! Father, where’s Father?”

Click would have broken it to her gently, but she read correctly the expression on his face. Tears welled into the eyes.

“Cut me loose, Click. There’s a whole box of those diamond knives there on that table. Badger traded me off for them and his liberty. He told the natives I was his wife. Then he killed my guards and brought me here.”

Click saw the box. The diamonds were unpolished, in the rough, but they caught the light and sent it glittering in brilliant reflections. They were large, some being three inches in length.

He grasped one, cut through the cords which held the girl, assisted her to her feet.

“Could we — Father’s body?”

He shook his head.

“It was in the thick of the fighting. And it’s getting light now. The storm’s over.”

“Where are we?”

Click Kendall led the way to the outer room.

He turned to the window in the floor, began a minute study of the ground below.

Little men were rushing about, splashing through the mud. The ground was carpeted with dead and wounded, showing where the brunt of the fight had taken place, and most of the victims were of the dwarf tribe.

Click had an opportunity to study one of the night men who had been taken captive. He was tall, well over six feet, splendidly muscled. The skin was pale, and the forehead seemed to be all eyes. They were astonishingly large and the man continually kept his crocked arm over them, shielding them from the rays of the sun as these rays filtered through the envelope of mist.

“I think,” said Dorothy, “Father would prefer being left here. It’s his planet, you know.”

And her tapering finger firmly slid the control button to negative gravitation.

Like a rocket hissing through the air, the shell darted through the warm moisture of the fog-filled air, shot past towering trees, and suddenly seemed enshrouded with white radiance. For only a fraction of a second did the white radiance grip the atmosphere, and then the shell, gathering speed with every foot of travel, shot out into the clear open air.

The blazing sunlight seemed the promise of a new world. The blue of the sky, intense, brilliant, deep; the piling billows of cloud below, all seemed clean, an augur of a more happy existence than the life of the fog-drenched planet.

Faster and faster they went. Click moved the lever. The car swung into lateral motion, went skimming over the top of the fog.

The dark rim of twilight loomed before them, showed a crescent of eternal darkness.

“The earth should be about above us now,” said the girl.

Click slammed the control over to extreme negative gravitation, and the car shot into accelerated motion. The planet below began to show the motion of its diminishing perspective, and the outer air grew dark with the darkness of interplanetary space.

The girl twisted a valve. Compressed air hissed into the car. She opened another valve.

“Oxygen,” she said, “and there’s a valve control to exhaust the foul air. Let’s go back in the inner room. There are controls there. I don’t like to be out here with Badger.”

Click followed her into the inner shell.

“These controls are arranged in series now,” she said. “We can handle the car from here.”

Click nodded.

“You get some sleep. I’ll keep it moving until we get some-where’s near the earth.”

She nodded, patted his hand.

“Good old Click!”

He got her to lie down on one of the beds, started an alcohol stove, brewed her a hot milk drink, saw her head nod with utter exhaustion even as she drank it. He eased her form back on the pillow, covered her with blankets, then turned his attention to the problem of navigating the car through space.

It was not easy, yet it was not so difficult as he imagined. He could see the disk of a bright star which he knew must be the earth. He moved the control over to a more easy rate of repulsion so that their speed would not be entirely beyond control.

His own head nodded with fatigue, but he grimly fought off the warm drowsiness. The clean sun beat with dazzling splendor upon the metallic sides of the car. The universe showed clean and sparkling, gems set in jet black.

Click improved his time by taking stock of the contents of the inner shell. It touched the outer shell only upon one long seam. There was a window at the top where it joined the top of the other shell. Click could see that this window was made to open inward. The glass was set in live rubber, under terrific pressure. This was to prevent the window blowing outward in space with the pressure of the air in the shell. And there were complicated levers and screws by which that window could be swung into place.

It was out of this window, then, that the life-giving air and the pressure necessary to sustain existence had leaked on that first wild plunge into the upper regions of the atmosphere.

Click inspected the bookshelf with its tables of planetary positions, its gravitational formulae, then turned his attention to the other equipment. There was a telescope, well made, mounted upon a folding tripod. There was a bulky package hanging from the wall. Inspection showed that it contained two parachutes of the type worn by aviators.

Evidently Professor Wagner had placed them there for use during his earlier experiments. They offered him a way back to earth should the shell prove unmanageable.

Click set up the telescope, unfolded the tripod, and swung the objective toward the window in the top.

The glass was crystal-clear, yet gave some distortion to the image, a species of haziness that prevented really clear perception. But Click was able to pick out the earth, almost directly above them. He could see the whirling continents, the seas, the cloud areas, those places where the sun beat down with glittering light upon shimmering deserts. The shadows of a mountain range loomed plainly.

Click saw they were approaching with terrific speed. He had made no effort to calculate speed other than by the unaided estimate of his eye. He felt reasonably sure of coming somewhere within the influence of the earth’s gravitation. He didn’t need to hit it at all close, a hundred thousand miles in either direction would still enable him to fall into the earth.

And then sheer exhaustion levied her toll. Click slumped to his side, pillowed his head on his arm, and slept. Hours later he awoke with a start. He could see that the car was somewhere above the Pacific Ocean. He caught a glimpse of Australia, China, then shifted his gaze to the east. Late afternoon mantled the shores of California, Oregon, Washington, Mexico, South America. He could see the mighty mountain chains casting long shadows to the east. And the car was whizzing its lateral motion with constant acceleration.

The girl was awake, at the controls. She smiled at him. “We’re getting there,” she said.

Click rubbed his eyes, peered through the window.

It was a breath-taking spectacle. The girl prepared a meal while they watched the panorama below. The great black disk of the earth, illuminated by the moon, the flaming stars, the mighty disk of the sun itself, blazing in white-hot splendor.

Then the sun was obscured by the earth. All about them reigned darkness save for the pin-points of flaming stars. Click groped for the light switch, set the lights going. He and the girl ate in anxious silence.

“Let’s see where we are,” said Dorothy, and switched off the lights.

Below them a luminous haze seemed to bathe the floor.

“Moonlight on the earth, being reflected back at us,” she remarked.

They sat in awed wonder, watching the spectacle. Click reached over, took her hand. Nor did she make any move to withdraw it. Hand in hand they watched.

At length there was a ribbon of light, a great horn that grew in volume.

“We’re swinging clear of the world,” she announced. “Now to check our lateral speed and start falling again. Leave the gravitational indicator over at about half gravitation. I’ll shove the lateral speed back and we’ll see how we come.”

Click moved the controls.

“I’d better see how Badger’s getting on,” he said, smiled at her in the light that was streaming into the shell from the sun’s disk as it swung around the edge of the world, and flung open the door.

He stepped into the outer shell, saw a little wad of rope lying on the floor; just the rope, nothing more.

“How did that get there?” he asked, and, of a sudden, knew the answer. Badger had slipped from his bonds. Where, then, was he?

Click turned, saw the huddled shape of menace, caught the outthrust rifle as it held upon him, steady as a rock, and gave one wild leap.

The bullet spattered squarely on the edge of the door, glanced, and hit the control box. Click slammed the metal door shut, snapped a bar into place.

“He’s in command outside. We’re cooped up in here like rats in a trap,” he said.

Dorothy Wagner nodded. “Lucky we’ve got the controls here, though. We can land almost where we want to, and we’ll land him f.o.b. Police Station at Centerberry.”

Click grinned at her.

“S’pose they’ll believe the story we tell by way of complaint?”

It was her turn to smile.

She advanced to the controls, glanced down at the earth.

“We seem to be coming in all right. Guess I’ll let it check a little bit.”

She pushed at the indicator.

“It doesn’t work. His bullet must have smashed the control wires. We’re out of control, falling into the earth, and we’ll pick up speed. I don’t think we’re over a hundred miles away, and our lateral speed has checked a lot.”

They exchanged glances.

“Can we make some sort of repairs? After all, we could come to a truce with Badger. He’ll realize that we’re all threatened by the same danger.”

She shook her head.

“The last discovery, the last experiment that gave the missing link in his invention was perfected by Dad while I was away. Then you know what happened. Dad never had a chance to explain it to me. Even if we could get out there, I couldn’t fix the controls, I’m afraid.”

Click scratched his head.

“And this box is entirely out of order?”

She had been experimenting with the keys.

“No-o-o. It isn’t quite wrecked. But it seems to have lost about nine-tenths of its control effectiveness.”

“Then,” remarked Click, “there’s nothing to do but to wait.”

Wait they did. Once more their hands touched, held.

“Dot,” said Click, his voice choking. “Now’s no time to say what I want to say, but if anything should happen, I want you to know—”

She raised her face to his, smiled at him with deep eyes, half parted lips.

“Yes, dear. I know, have known ever since I saw the look on your face when you came to rescue me.”

She gave him her lips. For a long minute they stood clasped together. Then they separated and looked destiny in the face.

The earth showed as a vast curved plain now, and the tumbled sea of water below seemed endless, sparkling in the rays of the morning sun.

Click opened the outer door a crack.

“Badger, throw down the gun. I want a truce. We’re in a bad situation.”

A taunting laugh was his only answer.

“Bluff!” snapped the man. “You’ve got another control in there.”

And the roaring of the gun punctuated his comment.

Of a sudden, as Click slammed the door and bolted it, he noticed a peculiar sound that had been gradually springing up, gathering force. It sounded like a weird whistle, long drawn, wailing.

He glanced at the girl.

“Atmosphere,” she said. “We’re getting into the air of the earth, and it’s whirling around at a speed of perhaps a thousand miles an hour, following the motion of the earth.”

Louder and louder shrilled the whistling air. The shell had been lagging behind the motion of the globe. Now as the air caught it, the shell was hurtled ahead, constantly increasing its velocity. And, as the air grew more dense, the atmospheric pressure became more pronounced.

The girl worked the lateral lever, easing the strain as much as she could. Closer and closer came the globe. And the sun ceased to sweep across the heavens, the globe ceased to whirl below them, spinning at terrific speed. Instead, the world became more fixed, and the sun resumed an orderly march across the heavens.

Minutes lengthened into anxious hours. Night enveloped them. They were within some twenty miles of the earth’s surface now, falling, but not rapidly.

Then the girl made a discovery.

“Look, the positive side of the gravitation is almost intact. Not that it does us any good except that it might facilitate landing. It’s the negative side that’s broken.”

“Don’t work that side, then,” warned Click. “There’d be nothing to check us.”

She nodded. “I wonder where we are?”

“There’s the moon. Looks different down here, doesn’t it? Look, look, that’s land!”

She followed his finger. Far to the east was a dark shadow lying upon the golden reflection of the waters.

“Looks like it, all right. It’s land unless it’s a fog bank. Get the telescope.”

They set up the telescope, gazed through one of the windows.

“Yes, yes, I can see lights. It’s a coast town!”

Click pressed his face against the window.

“And we’re drifting toward it.”

For minutes they watched. The lights came closer and closer, finally swung below them.

“S’pose it’s an island?”

She shook her head. “No. Look to the south and east. See the airport? See that whole ocean of lights looming up. I’ll bet that’s Los Angeles, and this must be Santa Barbara down below. Look, you can see a drive along the ocean front there, and there are palm trees along it. Here, use these night glasses.”

Click took the glasses, saw the city, the buildings, the mountains, quiet and serene, saw moving lights where automobiles crept along.

“We’ll be down soon,” he said.

She nodded.

“And we’ve got too much downward speed. My experimenting with the downward scale of plus gravitation increased our falling speed.”

They remained silent for another spell. Click noticed that the side speed of the car was increasing.

“Yes,” she said when he pointed it out to her, “it’s functioning somewhat, and it’s getting acceleration. It’s a good thing to have side speed. It’ll soften the bump.”

“Mountains?” asked Click.

“Below us,” she said. “We’re still five or six miles up in the air.”

Again they drifted on and down.

The lights faded away. Great pools of darkness showed ahead.

“The desert,” she said.

“We don’t want to come down there.”

“We’ll have to, I’m afraid. The car’s settling rapidly. I’m afraid we’ve got a lot of down speed.”

And then Click’s mind snapped with a sudden recollection.

“Parachutes!” he yelled. “I saw a couple of packed ’chutes. Can we get out?”

And she rippled into a laugh.

“How foolish of me not to have remembered. Yes, we packed a couple of emergencies. Here, I’ll get them out. You put some of the diamonds into your pockets. You can’t tell. Badger may manage to clean us out of what we leave.” Click nodded.

The bright moonlight, flooding through the window, showed them what they wanted. They strapped on the ’chutes.

“Know how to work them?”

He nodded.

“Served on an observation balloon once. How do we get that window open?”

“I’ll show you. Give me a boost. That’s it. There it comes. Doesn’t that fresh earth air feel good. How much better a place this is than that wet, miserable, soggy planet of hopelessness!”

Chapter 10 The Crater

Click walked softly to the inner door, eased off the bolt, tied the knob with a bit of heavy rope. Then he opened it a crack and called to Badger.

“Badger, we’re going to jump. You can come in when we leave. I’ve tied the door with rope. It’ll take you a minute or two to cut it. You can bring it down, but the control’s broken. You can’t come down any slower than it’s going now. We’ll jump when we see a settlement, and we’ll send a search party out after you.”

His answer was a curse.

“Boloney!” went on the cursing man. “The control’s no more broken than I am. Try getting out! I’ll send this shell dashing after you, crush the life out of you. Got some ’chutes, eh?”

“Yes, we have, and don’t experiment, either!” snapped Click.

“Oh, Click,” called the girl. “Here’s a cluster of lights out here. It looks like a desert town.”

“Coming,” he said. “You jump and I’ll follow. Don’t forget to have your hand on your rip cord as you leave.”

She waved her hand.

“See you later, dear.”

And then she tilted backward and plunged into the night.

Click opened his knife, slithered it out into the room.

“Cut the rope, Badger. We’re off.”

And he jumped to the table, caught the upper edge of the vertical window, slipped outside, and turned for a last look inside the shell.

He saw the flash of a knife blade. The lights switched on, brilliantly illuminating the interior. He saw the rope part, the door swing open, Badger come running in with a rifle in one hand.

A quick look and he saw Click, clinging to the edge of the window.

Cursing, Badger sprang for the controls, slammed the slide over, despite Click’s warning shout. Straight up he pushed the slide, then, as there was no response, pushed it clear over the other way.

Click’s hands felt the shell jerked from them as though he had been trying to hold a rifle bullet. He was left suspended in the air.

For a moment he thought he was shooting straight up at terrific speed, for the light of the shell slipped into the moonlit night below, became but a speck.

Then he realized what had happened. The shell was dashing toward earth, and there was no control that would check it.

Air that was grippingly cold rushed past him, whipped his garments. He remembered to jerk the rip cord. There was the crackle of cloth. Something white streaked up into the moonlight above him. Then the harness tugged at him. The ’chute opened with a crackling report.

He swung back and forth in a sickening arc. He looked below to see what had happened to the shell.

As he looked, it struck, struck the desert with such force that it seemed a volcano must have opened. There was a white spot of incandescent heat, a burst of flame as oxygen ignited, then nothing but a single glowing coal that melted away finally into nothing.

Far to one side, higher up, he could see the girl’s parachute, swinging in the white moonlight like a gigantic mushroom.

Down he drifted.

The surface was farther away than he had anticipated. It took them an appreciable length of time to come down. And a desert wind whipped them far to the east.

At length Click saw the ground, a white blur, coming to meet him. He braced himself, struck, tugged at the ’chute to spill the wind, and then wrestled with the harness.

The ’chute swung over, crackled in the wind, was whisked away. The silence of the desert gripped him.

“Oh, Click,” he heard a voice, and his ears had never heard a more welcome sound.

“Here, dearest,” he answered.

They found each other, melted in a single affectionate embrace. Then they began their long walk.

Somewhere to the north a coyote howled.

The moon bathed them with mellow benediction. The lights of the town twinkled in the frosty desert air.

Then there was the sweep of a searchlight. An automobile blared its horn. Another came down from the north. They could see the path of the lights, see them come to a stop, see shadowy figures moving about.

“Let’s go there. We can get a lift,” said Click.

She nodded, increased her stride.

Yet it was an hour before they reached the place, and by that time a circle of machines had gathered.

“By George, I believe — yes, it’s where the shell struck!” said Click.

They joined the throng, unnoticed.

A deep crater was in the sand. About it the sand itself had been melted by the heat of that which had happened. A twisted lump of discolored, seared metal was out on one side of the rim.

“Meteor,” explained one of the spectators. “They seen it strike an’ been digging for it. Just found it. Funny it ain’t bigger. Looked like she weighed ten ton when she come down. You folks goin’ to town? Guess the show’s all over here.”

Click nodded.

“Thanks. We’ll ride,” he said.

The desert man piloted a rattling flivver, covered with white dust, over the desert roads.

“Lookin’ for mines?” he asked.

Click shook his head.

“Looking for a preacher,” he remarked.

The girl started, squeezed his arm.

“Aren’t you rather abrupt?” she asked.

Click nodded. “Bet your life I am. We’ve got to see a preacher, and then we’ve got to see a gem expert and cash in a few thousand dollars’ worth of gems. After that? After that we’ve got to learn to keep quiet about where we’ve been and what happened. Let the Wagner shell remain one of the unsolved mysteries.”

“Yes,” she said after a while. “It’s better so. We’re in a new country. We’ll just begin life here and forget the other.”

The desert man looked back at them curiously.

“Elopers, eh? Well, you’re gettin’ a good start. See that bright star over there in the east? That’s Venus, the star of lovers. It’s the mornin’ star these days. Be daylight in coupla hours.”

The two turned, joined the gaze of the desert man in looking at the bright planet. But he would have been surprised could he have fathomed their thoughts at that moment.